Report Poorly Parked Cars and Bad Drivers with the ‘TowIt’ App

Few things are as enraging and unnerving as the way New Yorkers drive. And although no one wants to be a tattletale, there’s finally a way to help better patrol bad drivers right from our smartphones. Called TowIt, this handy app allows concerned citizens to snap photos of motor violations, geo-tag them, and then send them in real-time for ticketing or towing by law enforcement and city officials.

TowIt was created by Michael McArthur and is described as a way for “civilians to report selfish or illegal parking and dangerous driving in real time.” The site adds that “TowIt works with municipal governments, local law enforcement, and towing companies to remove the barriers required to make cities effectively fight and deter bad parking and dangerous driving habits.”

However, because the the app depends on the local government to act on reported violations, it’s not quite as robust as one would hope. CityLab rightly describes that factor as “kind of a weakness.” But that aside, it does provide a pretty good medium for publicly shaming those who can’t seem to follow some basic rules. Example:

TowIt hasn’t quite taken off in NYC yet (there were just three violations the last time we checked), but you can start policing the streets by downloading the app through Google or Apple.